1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a display device to be incorporated into, for example, the display unit of a facsimile equipment having telephone functions.
2. Background Art
In using a conventional facsimile equipment with telephone functions, as a telephone set, the handset is picked up or a special key, such as a hook key, of the facsimile equipment is depressed to connect the facsimile equipment to a telephone line, and then a special key provided on the facsimile equipment for displaying the telephone number of a called party is depressed to display the telephone number on the display unit of the facsimile equipment, to retrieve the telephone number and to activate a network control unit (hereinafter abbreviated to "NCU").
Recently, the number of figures of a telephone number has increased with the expansion of the telphone network. In some cases, such a telephone number having a large number of figures overflows the conventional display unit when the number of figures exceeds the maximum number of figures of the display unit. In such a case, it is impossible to dial the telephone number while confirming the previously stored telephone number since some numerals are out of display. This makes dialing inconvenient.
Simply increasing the length of the display area is not a good idea because a longer display unit is not available in the market or a special order is required to obtain the longer display unit suited for the facsimile machine. In other words, increase in the length of the display area is limited to a certain extent or a cost would be raised.